Few psychology theories have as much support as the “Big
Five” personality traits — the finding that people’s personalities
can be described by variations across five basic dimensions:
openness to new experience, conscientiousness, extroversion/
introversion, agreeableness and neuroticism. But new research
with a small South American tribe has thrown the universality
of the five factor model into question.

According to a study published Dec. 17 in the Journal
of Personality and Social Psychology, a team of researchers
administered a translated version of a Big Five personality
inventory to 632 Tsimane, members of a small tribe of hunter-gatherers in the Bolivian lowlands. The researchers asked
them to rate on a 1-to- 5 scale how much words like “aloof,”
“reserved” and “energetic” described their personalities.

When researchers analyzed the results, they found thatthe traits did not cluster into the usual Big Five groups. Forinstance, a person who rated himself as “reserved” also tendedto say he was “talkative” — suggesting that the overarchingconcept of extraversion doesn’t hold up in this culture, sayslead author Michael Gurven, PhD, an anthropology professorat the University of California, Santa Barbara. In fact, only twoclusters of correlated responses emerged from a factor analysisof the 40-item test: industriousness and a tendency to beprosocial.

—SADIE DINGFELDER

Michael Gurven

A tribe of hunter-gatherers in the Bolivian lowlands show evidence of just two personality factors, rather than the usual five.